Jhana experience without meditation!I just wonder whether this is possible.In Samatha meditation, your Jhana experience is due to suppression of Attachment, aversion and unrest. I think we can work it back word as follows.

a)Practicing Brahama Vihara you can suppress or eliminate angerb)By practicing Dana (giving) you can suppress or eliminate attachment

So a person who practice a and b must be able to experience Jhana without meditation.

The only place I've see where it may be possible to attain jhana without meditation is in the suttas where people gain the Noble Paths just by listening to a Dhamma discourse given by the Buddha or one of his Noble Disciples. Those people had highly developed faculties and perfections developed over many lifetimes. Just the fact that they were born in the time and place of the Buddha is enormously good fortune, viz. good kamma. But there is no mention of jhana here and there is debate as to whether jhana is needed for the Noble Paths. So this is purely speculative.

I've never heard of jhana attained by giving. Giving falls under virtue, jhana falls under concentration or purification of mind. According to the relay chariots sutta (MN 24), "purification of virtue is for the sake of purification of mind".

According to the commentaries, the brahmaviharas can be used to attain jhana if meditated upon correctly.

As far as my understanding goes, jhanas are very deep states of concentration where "Māra and his following cannot go...blindfolded Māra, to have become invisible to the Evil One by depriving Māra's eye of its opportunity." -MN 25, Ven. Bodhi translation

I couldn't find what happiness suppresses in this article by Ven. Gunaratana. Rapture suppresses ill will.

As a factor of the first jhana, sukha signifies pleasant feeling. The word is explicitly defined in the sense by the Vibhanga in its analysis of the first jhana: "Therein, what is happiness? Mental pleasure and happiness born of mind-contact, the felt pleasure and happiness born of mind-contact, pleasurable and happy feeling born of mind contact — this is called 'happiness' " (Vbh.257). The Visuddhimagga explains that happiness in the first jhana has the characteristic of gratifying, the function of intensifying associated states, and as manifestation, the rendering of aid to its associated states (Vism. 145; PP.151).

When defined in terms of agency, piti is that which creates interest in the object; when defined in terms of its nature it is the interest in the object. Because it creates a positive interest in the object, the jhana factor of rapture is able to counter and suppress the hindrance of ill will, a state of aversion implying a negative evaluation of the object.

MA explains liberation (vimokkha) here as meaning the mind’s full (but temporary) release from the opposing states and its full (but temporary) release by delighting in the object. The first liberation is the attainment of the four jhānas using a kasi˚a (see §24 and n.768) derived from a coloured object in one’s own body; the second is the attainment of the jhānas using a kasi˚a derived from an external object; the third can be understood as the attainment of the jhānas through either a very pure and beautiful coloured kasina or the four brahmavihāras . The remaining liberations are the immaterial attainments and the attainment of cessation.

The Vism would give more info. on the kasinas. Briefly, examples of internal colored objects are the redness of the blood, whiteness of the bones,..For your second question, notice it said "the attainment of the jhānas through either a very pure and beautiful coloured kasina OR the four brahmavihāras"

You can actually get to the Jhanas with the divine abidings, but the Jhanas arise only when applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, happiness, and unification of mind are strong, and those factors only arise when the 5 hindrances are abandoned. Access concentration contains those factors and is void of the hindrances, but the factors are weak. The later jhanas (2-4, or 2-5) arise with the abandonment of each of those factors one-by-one. The divine abidings only lead to the 3rd jhana (four-fold scheme) or the 4th (5-fold scheme).

The divine abidings can easily eliminate one's ill-will and sensuality, but the abandonment of restlessness and drowsiness requires you to balance the faculties, and the abandonment of doubt requires understanding of sorts. So the divine abidings can lead to the jhanas, but you must be sure to abandon the hindrances and develop the 5 jhana factors, or else there won't be any jhana.

"Eat little! Sleep little! Speak little! Whatever it may be of worldly habit, lessen them, go against their power. Don't just do as you like, don't indulge in your thought. Stop this slavish following. You must constantly go against the stream of ignorance. This is called "Discipline." When you discipline your heart, it becomes very dissatisfied and begins to struggle. It becomes restricted and oppressed. When the heart is prevented from doing what it wants to do, it starts wandering and struggling. Suffering becomes apparent to us."

Some info:Ekaggatā (one-pointedness of mind) is the directopposite of Kāmacchanda (sensual desire). When we havesensual desire, our minds are taken to different objects. Weare attached to these things. Our minds go round. Ekaggatādoes not let the mind go here and there. It keeps the mindstable and on one object. So it is the opposite of sensualdesire. I think this information is good for us. If we want todevelop Ekaggatā (Ekaggatā is Samādhi.), we should havelittle sensual desire. So long as we have sensual desire, wecannot hope to get Samādhi or concentration because ourminds will always be attached or attracted to different objects.If the mind is always going to different objects, the mindcannot get rest. The mind cannot be still. And so we cannotget concentration. We should keep it in mind and try to havethe least sense-desire as is possible, so we may developconcentration.

An understanding relating to the meditative practice, the teachings, etc. It comes naturally from meditation. Some people start out doing it wrong, and then they start doubting themselves. Then they catch it, watch it fade away, get back to meditating, and sooner or later they come to a small insight like "aha! I was doing something wrong!"

Sustained thought is also a direct counter to doubt. Doubt is also stopped when you remind yourself that meditation is the path of the Buddha (which would also be a way of snapping out of laziness).

"Eat little! Sleep little! Speak little! Whatever it may be of worldly habit, lessen them, go against their power. Don't just do as you like, don't indulge in your thought. Stop this slavish following. You must constantly go against the stream of ignorance. This is called "Discipline." When you discipline your heart, it becomes very dissatisfied and begins to struggle. It becomes restricted and oppressed. When the heart is prevented from doing what it wants to do, it starts wandering and struggling. Suffering becomes apparent to us."

In his reply the Buddha shows how the lay disciple takes up one of the six objects of recollection (cha anussati): the Three Jewels, morality, generosity, and the devas. As the disciple recollects each theme, his mind is not obsessed by lust, hatred, or delusion, but becomes upright (ujugata): "With an unright mind he gains the inspiration of the goal, the inspiration of the Dhamma, gladness connected with the Dhamma. When he is gladdened rapture arises, his body becomes tranquil, and he experiences happiness. For one who is happy the mind becomes concentrated."[27] As this passage shows, contemplation based on the Buddha (and the other objects of recollection) culminates in samādhi, yet the nature of this samādhi is not elucidated by way of the jhāna formula. In fact, the Nikāyas never ascribe to these reflective contemplations the capacity to induce jhāna, and this is expressly denied in the Commentaries, which hold that because these meditation subjects involve intensive use of discursive thought they can lead only as far as access concentration (upacāra-samādhi).